Feature Article from Hemmings Classic Car

The car was still tucked inside the trailer, but John Fitch had his camera at the ready, anticipation evident in his broad smile and the gleam in his eye. What was about to back down the ramp was a 1966 Corvair Corsa--and not just any Corsa. This was a genuine Corvair Sprint, a car designed and sold by none other than John Fitch, inventor, World War II fighter pilot, and one of the finest road-racing drivers this country has ever produced.
And this was not just another Sprint, but the very car that John had owned and driven as a demonstrator, in the days when his four-bay shop was turning Chevrolet's air-cooled economy car into a true performance GT for enthusiasts on a budget.
This 1966 Sprint, the property of the Corvair Preservation Foundation, had been delivered from Sandusky, Ohio, to John's home in northwestern Connecticut by its caretaker, Pete Koehler. The coupe had just emerged from a lengthy restoration, and Pete was eager to have John give it his blessing before trucking it out to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for the 2010 national meet of the Corvair Society of America, its first public showing. This was the first time that John, 93, had seen the Sprint in 28 years, but the intervening time had not dimmed his memories. Was it as he remembered it? "Well, yes, absolutely!" he replied.
When the Corvair was new, it was inevitable that John, recently retired from racing, would gravitate toward it. Among the most European of Detroit's offerings, the Corvair offered a low price, relatively light weight, four-wheel independent suspension and an air-cooled flat-six engine that could be tuned for greater power, all in a package that could accommodate a family. John, whose exploits with Mercedes-Benz, Briggs Cunningham and others had placed him in the upper echelons of the world's road-racing drivers, immediately saw the car's potential. "For a person like me, it was just a logical progression," he said.
Others had tried their hands at tweaking the Corvair--the hot Yenko Stingers that emerged from Yenko Chevrolet in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, are probably the best-known examples--but none had quite the same vision as John. Aiming to produce a car that would be street-legal in all 50 states and modestly priced to boot, he developed a set of modifications that would transform the driving qualities of the car. So simple were the changes that the whole package could be added to a stock Corsa in a single day, while the customer waited.
In stock form, even the 1965-'69 Corvair with its improved independent rear suspension "wasn't a good car to drive," John said. "It was all right, but it wasn't a pleasing car to drive." The Sprint, on the other hand, was. "I remember well what those cars were like, and they were completely unrelated to a normal Corvair," he said. "I understand what makes a good-handling car. The suspension is changed, and the steering ratio is changed. It was very cheap--I think it was under $3,000--and here it was a Porsche!" he laughed. In fact, the Sprint, as tested by Car and Driver magazine in 1965, was precisely $2,983.15; just for comparison's sake, a new Porsche 911 listed for $6,490.
Customers could buy a new Corsa directly from John Fitch & Co., or order one through their local Chevrolet dealer and have it delivered to his shop in Falls Village, Connecticut--this, John suggested, was probably the cheaper way to go. Other options included having the local dealer order the parts from John and install them at the dealership, buying a Corvair and driving it to Falls Village for the conversion, or ordering the parts through the mail for installation at home.
The basic Sprint package consisted of a dozen components that improved the car's acceleration, handling and appearance. Engine modifications were simple, and became simpler. When John first began building the cars in December of 1961, one of the upgrades he offered was a reworking of the intake manifolds so that two more carburetors could be added, for a total of four; a local machinist made aluminum blocks for the purpose, which were screwed and epoxied to the intake manifolds. When the factory itself began offering a four-carburetor engine with the Corvair's redesign in 1965, it saved Fitch & Co. the trouble.
As assembled at the factory, the Corsa's 140hp flat-six engine had two primary one-barrel carburetors and two secondary carbs; John was able to find an additional 15 horsepower simply by replacing the secondaries with another set of primaries, jettisoning the stock air cleaner for four free-breathing air filters and advancing the ignition by three degrees.
Having four primary-type carbs improved driveability, too, eliminating linkage slop and evening out the mixture supplied to the six cylinders. "The secondaries were always gummed up and no good," John said. "You got worse mileage, whereas with four primaries, the mileage improved!" ("The secondary carbs were [and still are] prone to sticking shut," notes Corvair authority Larry Claypool. "The factory secondaries in 1965-'66 don't have any idle circuit, so if the driver never 'punches' it, the fuel in the bowls of the carbs just sits there and turns to gum as the lighter parts of the fuel evaporate away. The factory did eventually fix this by adding a small, nonadjustable idle circuit to the secondary carbs of 1968-'69 models, so there would be constant turnover of fuel in the bowl.") With John's carburetor setup, four chokes made for better cold starting, too.
The transaxle was the standard four-speed unit, although Fitch & Co. improved the shift linkage so much that reviewers remarked on it. "I didn't change the gearing. I wanted to keep it an affordable car, and I didn't want to do those things that would cost a lot of money," John explained.
Steering response was sharpened by cutting down the stock control arms, welding them back together, and subjecting the finished product to Magnafluxing for safety; this cut the ratio from the factory's 23:1 to 15:1. A Corvette-spec steering damper was also added. Suspension modifications included the addition of progressive-rate, auxiliary rubber bumpers, a pair of adjustable Gabriel shock absorbers in the rear, and some tinkering with caster settings up front, and camber front and rear. A set of 13 x 5.5-inch Hands aluminum wheels reduced unsprung weight, and, if the buyer followed John's advice, were shod with Pirelli or Michelin radials in place of the stock bias-ply tires.
A master salesman, John understood that the car could not simply be different--it had to look different, too. A neighbor, the well-known illustrator Coby Whitmore, helped design the trademark "Ventop," a fiberglass half-roof that transformed the look of the coupe. Skip North, John's former service manager, recalled that he would transport these, six to eight at a time, in the back of a Volkswagen pickup truck from the shop near Hartford, Connecticut, where they were made. The tops were painted satin black, and then screwed and epoxied to the car, using a special press created for the task. Flat-black front hood paint could be added, as well as Lucas Flamethrower driving lamps in place of the high-beam units, which could be coated with Holt's "Fog Cote" yellow dye for a distinctive appearance and better visibility in foggy conditions. Special emblems called out "Sprint, by Fitch."
A wood-rimmed steering wheel and rosewood shift knob added a sporting touch to the stock interior; these could be complemented with the addition of an ammeter and oil pressure gauge above the radio, a dash-mounted high-beam switch and a bit of additional carpeting. For driver comfort, John developed a bracket to give tall drivers like himself more legroom, and offered a driver's-side headrest.
There were many other options available, from passenger grab bars to a dual trombone exhaust to a bracket for easing heel-and-toe shifting. Skip, who did the mechanical assembly of the cars in Falls Village, recalled that the Sprint "did exactly what it was meant to do. You could build a car to suit you. You could build a Corvette-beater--it would outhandle a Corvette at Lime Rock," the race track just down the road from John's shop.
Not that all Sprints were so ambitious. Most of the development testing was done on the roads in and around Lakeville, Connecticut, rather than at Lime Rock Park. "John wanted to make them smooth for the street, because most of the people who bought these cars were not that good as drivers--they just wanted something different," Skip said. But John would take care of his more capable customers, too. "A lot of times, John would take a buyer out for a test drive, and he'd come back and say, 'This guy is good, set it up right.' He'd do that for whoever persevered in asking him--he wouldn't do it for everybody."
Production of Sprints continued after the Corvair was killed in 1969. In the early 1970s, when his business became focused on the safety barriers he had invented, John sold his inventory to Art Hershberger of Princeton, Wisconsin, who created the Solar Sprint and Solar Cavalier.
How many customers were there? "There's really no telling how many Sprints were made--John was not a good record-keeper," Skip laughed. He estimated that at least 200 cars were modified to one degree or another at Fitch & Co., and that five times as many kits were sold, ranging from a few simple upgrades to entire performance packages.
For that reason, identifying a true Sprint today is a challenge. "Other than original receipts, there is no way of proving or disproving the heritage or history of a Corvair Sprint," said Rick Loving, who created and maintains a registry for the cars. "I currently have over 50 surviving Corvair Sprints listed on my personal roster, with about 20 to 30 percent of them still retaining some or all of the original paperwork proving their heritage beyond a doubt. The remaining cars all have a significant history of owners and either were originally created through mail-ordered kits or 'in shop' modification without retaining the original paperwork."
Rick suggested that a well-documented or well-preserved Sprint could easily be worth double the value of a stock Sport Coupe in similar condition, or close to $10,000 for really good examples--and up to $20,000 for perfect concours-quality cars. It's possible to carry out most of the Sprint modifications on a non-Sprint Corvair today; even the fiberglass roof is available, for $1,200, though it differs in details from the ones used by Fitch & Co.
Today, Skip isn't so sure about comparisons to the Porsche 911. "It would have to be an early Porsche that had a tuck-under problem (with its rear suspension), like the Corvair," he said. "We had a limited budget, and we were trying to make this fit that. But John was a genius."

This article originally appeared in the February, 2011 issue of Hemmings Classic Car.